To be honest I ran a hi fi shop like that for years . I run my life like that . Thank goodness Colleen can see the good in me . Colleen who secretly knows about art yet will not talk about it .

You are fortunate. I worked with someone for a few years whose wife left him promptly the moment her doctoring work secured an income, after they had moved to Hawaii. He returned to a house totally emptied save a broken chair. Of course he alleged (and may have been completely sincere) that he had no idea it was coming. One thing she resented, besides his disorganization, was never giving up cannabis, and I suspect thinking that she didn't detect it.

He used to set up instrumentation (nothing to do with audio) and I would get a headache shortly after he'd demonstrate something, as things were always so marginal and flaky. He also ruined a good (and only) oscilloscope in short order by insisting on using the controls in every possible setting and changing them continuously. I pointed out that a simple A triggers B was entirely adequate for the vast majority of his measurements, to no avail.

Great words and taken to heart . Yes I am a very lucky man . She secretly speaks Italian . How wonderful is that ?

I noticed the Pioneer I so liked has a 32 bit asynchronous DAC . If wearing my Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker I feel it requires further investigation . It just wasn't Burger King . I am no great fan of class D so even more impressive .

People mention this every now and again, and one of the simple answers is that the radio is an intrinsically straightforward electrical device.

Can I assume that you have never designed an FM tuner? Much harder than plain audio.

Lots of compomises e.g. IF bandwidth is a 'noise vs. distortion' balance. This is because perfect FM requires an infinite bandwidth for zero distortion, but that would allow in an infinite amount of noise. IF gain and AGC response is a 'local vs. distant' balance: high gain improves distance reception but degrades local reception.

My point of view on FM and much of audio is that the period 1939/45 produced many engineers and companies who could build anything no matter how complicated . The most interesting technical reading being 1946 to 1955 . When asking someone I was told 1955 marked the possibility of getting a real job in computers . Suddenly the wonderful world of the complicated well explained became silent . It is significant how the rather simple consequences of the Quad 405 were enough to almost fill the silence for years . My suspicion is that why FM works so well is that the principles were very well laid down . Even the cheapest radios have the genius still alive inside them . CD somehow never had someone say " stop , that isn't music " . As I have said it is nothing to do with digital .

I think vis a vis radio et al., it's our willingness to be forgiving, to some extent. John Curl recently mentioned that he listens to music on desktop equipment often, and I many times do the same (although I'm still pleased with the particular speakers I did the electronics for, and the industrial design that for once facilitated better dispersion and a limited need for EQ).

Another phenomenon occurs with severe bandlimiting, but may have a limited and contextual effect. When memory was dear and MPEG still a gleam in its progenitors' eyes, I did an audio point-of-sale device that never sold (so you haven't heard it, although there were shoddier examples out there). I digitized a source to an uncompressed dithered 8 bits, and burned into a UV PROM. The sample rate only allowed around an 8kHz bandwidth. The result was quite pleasant and sounded a bit like a very good AM radio for all of the several seconds of playback. But I think the cueing in to the fidelity or at least the limited bandwidth of about AM radio--- better usually than telephony but not hifi --- was effective in allowing tolerance of the limited fidelity in other ways. When I demonstrated a prototype box for Steve Dove, he said "Ah that little bit of hiss must be from the analog tape recorder source". No, it's a carefully adjusted bit of random dither.

Just to say the more interesting KEF speaker was this one . Very like the C10 of old and where I felt C10 could go in the future . It is rare to hear any speaker fascinate the way Quads of Magnaplanars do , the KEF does . This one should satisfy those who hear the deficiencies that the Quads sometimes can not hide ( usually room related ) . 0.4 % THD @ 90 dB , not bad and so honest to give it as a spec .

Many years ago when married to someone not called Colleen I was listening to AM radio from France . Fabienne asked who was singing , Elvis I said . " Are you sure " ? Yes , the reason you ask is that it is CD . For some reason CD especially then removed chest harmonics from the voices . Even allowing for 300 miles transmitted distance , LW , car stereo , it was obviously CD . A paper thin quality that no amount of bandwidth limiting could hide . Frank Sinatra almost sounded like a Castrato . I am very pleased to say that is a thing of the past now .

Madam F hated her parents for being so Bourgeois . Guess what , time cured that ! She even had a relation called Jacques Bourgeois who was not ! Funny old world .

My point of view on FM and much of audio is that the period 1939/45 produced many engineers and companies who could build anything no matter how complicated . The most interesting technical reading being 1946 to 1955 .

You may have a point. A combination of Forces training, genuine apprenticeships and genuine Higher Education meant that engineers from that period really knew their stuff, and to a certain extent were respected by opinion formers.

Systems developed in those days, including FM and analogue TV, generally work well and have lasted for many decades. Excellence was assumed by all to be a worthy goal. Systems developed since then are more likely to be designed to be cheap and 'as bad as we can get away with': digital TV and DAB radio are examples. These modern systems seem to need to be upgraded, often in an incompatible way, almost before the ink is dry on their specification documents. CD falls somewhere in the middle.

The nice thing about older analogue systems is that the source and reproduction ends of the system can be independently improved, while maintaining the all-important interface between them. Digital can't do this to the same extent; upgrades usually require a change to the specification so old equipment and recordings become obsolete.